I can't say that I have thoroughly tried the different compression levels to compare file size but with modern processors you don't need to worry about the processing power. Even the lowest powered modern processor has more than enough power to handle flac encoding. I just tried encoding a 3:30 wav file to flac at levels 3 and 8 on my 3 year old processor. Level 3 took about 3 seconds while level 8 took around 5 seconds.

At level 8 that's about 42 seconds of audio encoded every second. If you're encoding on the fly then the encoder will run faster than the rip so there will be literally zero difference in the time it takes between all compression levels.

The size gain may be marginal but if there is no time difference then the bang for your buck is at the highest compression.

rivorson wrote:I can't say that I have thoroughly tried the different compression levels to compare file size but with modern processors you don't need to worry about the processing power. Even the lowest powered modern processor has more than enough power to handle flac encoding. I just tried encoding a 3:30 wav file to flac at levels 3 and 8 on my 3 year old processor. Level 3 took about 3 seconds while level 8 took around 5 seconds.

At level 8 that's about 42 seconds of audio encoded every second. If you're encoding on the fly then the encoder will run faster than the rip so there will be literally zero difference in the time it takes between all compression levels.

The size gain may be marginal but if there is no time difference then the bang for your buck is at the highest compression.

Yeah, that's fine for ripping, but what about the device you play the FLAC file on. If you only play the file on one device, that has a capable processor for decompressing, it should be fine. But if you play back on a device with a marginal processor, like a car radio or android device, you can get stuttering and popping due to processor overhead being so high. When you look at the compression gain for anything above level 3, you don't really gain that much in reduced file size, but the processor overhead for compression and decompression is dramatic.
I have done comparisons myself, but no longer have the results, but here's one example I found online.http://z-issue.com/wp/flac-compression- ... omparison/

To me, it seemed to be a good idea to keep the files playable on as wide a variety of devices as possible. Actually I never play direct from my computer anyway.

I still think that even modern low powered processors found in Android devices and cars should be more than enough to decode flac at any compression level. With those devices the most likely cause of stuttering is storage speed rather than the processor. In that case smaller file = faster read.

My aging Nexus 7 tablet can certainly play level 8 flac files without stuttering. I also have a smart TV and an old sound system that both have slow processors but handle level 8 flac just fine.

There is no absolute right or wrong compression level though. The correction option is whatever works best for you

PocketPCs!
I remember when those were all the rage (preceeded by the Palm Pilot ). I never got one. I did have a Palm Pilot, though.
The phones became so powerful over time that they just over took them.

i would try to load up all 5 dvd players select one at a time select all the songs on it send to new playlist then select the next dvd drive and send all the tracks in order to the same playlist and keep doing that for all five dvds,
when all dvds are in the playlist, export the playlist to html, change to .txt open remove all the indicating text of the dvd's just leave the path way like d:\track.........
e:\track......

in front of each song so it looks like you have a long playlist on multiple hard drives. save and change back to a html change the name of the html and import the playlist.
rip if that don't make mm rip from one drive to the next then i'm not sure what you should do other then find a free program that will let you rip from multiple dvd / cd rom drives.

but as you can guess it is just as fast or faster to load all the dvd's up and rip them one at a time, as to make all that playlist export and import messing around.

Bob_m_54 wrote:Ripping DVDs, making playlists, multiple DVD drives???? I think the OP only wants to rip his CD collection easily...

Sorry I should have said dvd/cd drive , the playlist is because monkey wont auto change the drives or at least not my version.
Multiple dvd /cd drives , Doesn't everyone have 5 stuffed in their desktop tower?

1. Rip to a lossless format. Don't even think of ripping direct to a lossy format (MP3, AAC, WMA, etc.). Ripping is a time-consuming, tedious, physically painful process (when your collection runs to thousands of CDs, and you bend and twist to pick each next one from a stack beside the PC...), and you will never want to do it more than once. Large HDDs are now cheap. Buy one and rip to lossless. If you need lossy formats to put your music on a low-capacity portable media player, use MM to compress to a parallel directory. If another, better, lossy format comes along, you still have the original lossless format; compress again.

I rip to FLAC, compression level 8. FLAC decompression is a much more lightweight process than MP3 or AAC, so I don't think it matters that I use the highest level of FLAC compression, on any player.

2. Try to get the best possible rip you can, first time (again, you do not want to re-rip). Clean each disc carefully (clean one whilst the previous is ripping), and use a ripper that will try its best to correct errors. I use Exact Audio Copy; it tries hard to correct/re-read errors, and will report rip accuracy against the AccurateRip database.

3. Choose a ripping file system structure that suits you. I prefer to maintain the physical structure of my CD collection when ripped, so that if I do have to re-rip a CD, I know exactly where it should go. Thus, my file system looks like:

<root>/Album Artist/Album/01 Title.flac

I use a leading zero track name prefix, as many media players will not show tracks in the correct order without a leading zero, or if no track number is added. The track title metadata tag does not have the track number; that goes into the track# metadata tag.

4. Decide how obsessive you are about metadata. If you are online, you can use one of the many metadata databases, and apply that to rips. I'm a bit obsessive about the format and genres. Since most of my ripping predates me being online, with a fairly slow rip speed (~10x), I used to type the track details by hand into a text file whilst the CD was ripping (or take them from a hand-typed file of titles dating back 20 years or more, in a particular format), and I then have a unix script system that will take this list of names, and rename the ripped 'Track 01', etc. with the typed filenames. Now I am online, I fetch metadata from freedb, and correct it as I see fit, before starting the rip. I now get about 30x average rip speed with a newer PC & CD drive.

For artwork, I scan, clean, colour balance, contrast level and crop album artwork, and resize to 600x600 pixels. Or I use google to find images. The images on the metadata databases are often low resolution (150x150 is common).

5. I usually rip CD purchases in batches. I rip to a local disk on my PC, called 'NewlyRipped'. Then I scan/clean/crop/resize artwork, and put it into the individual album folders. I then run the unix script that renames tracks (if necessary), tidies away rip logs and .m3u files generated by the ripper, tidies away the artwork into a subfolder, leaving front and back artwork in the album folder. I tell my media server to ignore files in the 'Riplog' and 'Artwork' sub folders; I don't like importing playlists into my media libraries.

Having done all this, I then import 'NewlyRipped' into MM. If necessary, I infer tags from the filenames (where I've entered the titles by hand), do volume analysis on all tracks, and compress all tracks to MP3 onto a portable HDD. Once all that is done, I move the newly ripped albums into my main library (either by simple drag & drop, or by 'auto-organise'). The use of the NewlyRipped folder means I only move tracks into my main library when I have finished all the processing I need to have volume-analysed music in my MM library, and a compressed copy for portable use. Ripping directly into my main library, I would need to remember what work needed doing to what albums.

I have a portable MM installation on the portable HDD, so that last thing I need to do is import the new tracks into the portable library. Again, having compressed to a 'NewlyRipped' folder, I import these, and then move them into the main library. I could compress directly into the main library directory, and get MM to scan the entire library for new tracks, but it would take longer, and I'm now used to the process I use...

I only use 'Track# Artist - Title' for track filenames for 'Various Artists' compilation albums. In which case, the metadata tag 'Album Artist'' is 'Various Artists', 'Artist' is the track artist, and 'Title' is the track title. EAC makes this naming selection for me, if I tick the box to tell it the album is a compilation.

I don't include year in the filename, as that's embedded in the metadata field.

captain paranoia wrote:I rip to FLAC, compression level 8. FLAC decompression is a much more lightweight process than MP3 or AAC, so I don't think it matters that I use the highest level of FLAC compression, on any player.

I use FLAC 5 - There is almost no difference in size from 4 - 8. Although, I do like the "idea" of saving space, even if I didn't need to, so I'll stay above 3 (I also store music docus
and music oriented movies on my music drive, so I am concerned a little about size).
Encode speed - sure, slower is often better, but I'll stick with 5.
As far as decompression, it's just nice to be on the lighter side, even if the overall difference turns out to be insignificant.

captain paranoia wrote:Ripping is a time-consuming, tedious, physically painful process (when your collection runs to thousands of CDs, and you bend and twist to pick each next one from a stack beside the PC...), and you will never want to do it more than once.

Amen!

captain paranoia wrote:Try to get the best possible rip you can, first time (again, you do not want to re-rip). Clean each disc carefully (clean one whilst the previous is ripping), and use a ripper that will try its best to correct errors. I use Exact Audio Copy; it tries hard to correct/re-read errors, and will report rip accuracy against the AccurateRip database.

Funny thing is sometimes you can have a CD that is as clean as you can get it but it will give inaccurate rip in one optical and Accurate in another optical without
any further cleaning. Also, the percentage of Accurate rips one optical produces over the other can be about equal. That's another reason (aside from the obvious)
why having more than one is optimal.

captain paranoia wrote:For artwork, I scan, clean, colour balance, contrast level and crop album artwork, and resize to 600x600 pixels. Or I use google to find images. The images on the metadata databases are often low resolution (150x150 is common).

That's a lot of work. I usually just use Goggle images. I'll only do extra work on images if it's an all-time favorite album and I can't find anything sufficient enough in the color/size department (even then maybe not). I prefer anything from 600x600 - 1500x1500.

captain paranoia wrote:I usually rip CD purchases in batches. I rip to a local disk on my PC, called 'NewlyRipped'. Then I scan/clean/crop/resize artwork, and put it into the individual album folders. I then run the unix script that renames tracks (if necessary), tidies away rip logs and .m3u files generated by the ripper, tidies away the artwork into a subfolder, leaving front and back artwork in the album folder. I tell my media server to ignore files in the 'Riplog' and 'Artwork' sub folders; I don't like importing playlists into my media libraries.

I'm new, just found this thread which is great as I'm about to embark on this exercise myself.

Wisdom seems to be to rip to FLAC (as is lossless). This makes sense to me, but how does one then manage syncing files to ipods, android phones etc - which generally need mp3? Is there a way to do the file conversion at the time of syncing? or when creating a playlist to sync?